A Certain Magic (24 page)

She was still not feeling quite the thing when Piers arrived to take his leave of her, but she was dressed in her smartest morning dress and had had Penelope dress her hair in its most becoming style. And she was smiling.

“Piers,” she said when he was shown into the drawing room, “you are on your way. You have a better day for travel than yesterday would have been.”

“Yes,” he said. “Altogether too good to be cooped up inside a carriage, by the look of it. Perhaps I will squeeze up onto the seat between Maurice and Joe. Or send Joe to sit inside. I am sure he would enjoy the sleep.”

“Joe is not your coachman, by any chance, is he?” she asked.

“The very fellow,” he said with a grin. “Well, Allie.”

“Well, Piers.” She smiled at him, her hands clasped loosely before her. “Have a safe journey.” 

“Yes.” He set his head to one side and looked at her closely. “Why so pale? Are you unwell?”

“Yes, decidedly,” she said, the smile even wider. “I hate saying good-bye to those I am fond of, Piers. I wish you were in London already and this all over with. Do you know what I mean?”

He nodded.

“I am glad you came, though,” she said. “Very glad that we are friends again.”

“Yes.” He extended a hand to her and she took it after a moment’s hesitation. “I am deeply sorry about that other, Allie. We must put it behind us as if it had never been. Take care of yourself.”

“Yes,” she said. “And you.”

So much to say. And nothing at all to say. She quelled her panic and concentrated on breathing slowly and evenly. She smiled. She thought every bone in her hand would break.

“Allie,” he said. “Let me hug you.” 

And she was in his arms, her head pillowed against his shoulder, held to him, rocked against him. She closed her eyes and willed herself to remember every detail of this moment for the rest of her life. The hard muscularity of his body. The comfort of his arms and his shoulder. His cheek against the top of her head. The warmth and the smell of him. He and she, and their child between them.

Perhaps thirty seconds. At the most a minute. A minute to last a lifetime. 

“There.” He was grinning down at her. “Do you have a bone in your body that is not broken, Allie? If not, I shall do it again.”

“As soon as you let me go,” she said, “I shall crumple in a heap to the floor.”

“Swooning at my feet?” he said. “How very flattering. Let us put this to the test, shall we?” He released his hold on her. “Ah, you lied, Allie.”

“At this last possible moment you have discovered my great vice,” she said. “On your way, sir, before you discover more.”

“That is a tempting idea,” he said. “But I have horses waiting, alas. And Maurice and Joe. Good-bye, Allie.”

“Good-bye, Piers,” she said.

They smiled cheerfully at each other for a few moments longer before he turned sharply and strode from the room. 

Alice continued to smile at the door, her chin raised, her hands clasped tightly before her until she could no longer hear the sound of his horses clopping off into the distance. Then she sat down on the nearest chair and dropped her head as low as it could go.

***

The secret was to keep busy. To bath and change his clothes as soon as he arrived back at his rooms in London and go to White’s Club to find diversion. To find friends and acquaintances and even enemies if necessary.

Gambling had never held out any lures for him. But on the night of his return he played cards almost until dawn and came away with six hundred more pounds in his pockets than he had had when he started. Drinking had never been one of his vices, but that night he drank himself drunk and then sober again. Apart from a headache and a foul mood, he felt no different when he left the club than he had when he went in.

He had not whored for years, having given it up as a somewhat nauseating and unhealthy excess of youth. And yet he found himself at dawn in the frilled boudoir and perfumed bed of a skilled courtesan who had been his mistress for a spell years before. But he could not remember when he awoke considerably later in the morning, his head on her ample bosom, if he had done more than sleep. 

She neither complained nor looked contemptuous, so he concluded that his behavior had been entirely normal. But she smiled at him, clearly expecting something in return for providing his head with a pillow until such a late hour of the morning. 

“Well, Sal,” he said. “Have I been sleeping and wasting all this delicious softness?”

“That you have,” she said. “But it’s still available to you. For old times’ sake. You always was the best. “

“Ah, for old times’ sake, then,” he said, turning her beneath him and waiting for her to accommodate herself to him before lowering his weight. “Let me see if I can live up to my reputation, Sal.”

He almost could not. He almost compared her to another woman. But he closed his eyes tightly and buried his nose in the harsh, sweet perfume of Sally’s hair and drove himself toward forgetfulness and release.

“Ooh,” she said, sighing with satisfaction a few minutes later, “I’ll have bruises to remember this one by.”

“I’m sorry, Sal,” he said, kissing her and rolling away. He sat on the edge of the bed, his aching head in his hands for a few moments. “Deuce take it, I wish I were dead.” 

She chuckled throatily. “You’ll take the rest of the day to sleep this one off,” she said. “How much did you drink, anyway?”

“The sea dry,” he said, getting resolutely to his feet and beginning to pull his clothes on.

Ten minutes later Sally was gaping and planning her retirement from a profession that was only very occasionally satisfying—as it had been all too briefly that morning. She was counting out the money Mr. Westhaven had left on the table by the door of her boudoir, and recounting it very slowly and carefully with trembling hands.

Six hundred pounds in addition to double her usual fee.

***

Alice waited until the next day before calling on Andrea to tell her that she had received a letter from Web’s cousin and his family in Yorkshire, inviting her to stay with them for the summer. Indeed, they even wished her to live with them indefinitely, but she was not sure yet that she wished to commit herself to such an arrangement. 

“You are going away again so soon and for such a longtime?” Andrea asked in dismay. “Oh, Alice, and I have so enjoyed having you back here again. I did not know your husband had any living relatives except the ones who inherited your home.”

“They are on his mother’s side,” she said. “Web was always close to them, but they have been traveling for the last year and more. Now they are home to stay.”

Andrea clucked her tongue. “Well,” she said, “it is very selfish of me to wish you were not going, Alice. But surely you cannot seriously be considering staying there to live? You seem to value your independence so highly.”

“But it is hard to be alone,” Alice said. “I still miss Web, Andrea. Sometimes almost more than I can bear. Oh, how foolish of me.” She rose sharply to her feet and crossed the room to the window.

And how hypocritical! She had spent the whole of the day before in a nightmare of longing for Web’s friend. She was carrying the child of Web’s friend. And yet, and yet it was true. The night before she had hugged her pillow against her and stretched her arm out to the side of the bed where Web had always lain and longed and longed for the safe comfort of his presence again. If only he had not died, if only he had not been so foolish and laughed at her scoldings and pleadings that he not go out in the rain before he was quite recovered from his illness. He had kissed her and called her a mother hen and told her that if she really insisted, he would stay and hold her hand all day and read with her.

She had not insisted. 

If only she had. If only he were still alive. She would have been saved from all the temptation, all the turmoil. For if Web were alive, she would not have dreamed of dragging her feelings for Piers up beyond the realm of dreams. All that had happened would not have, happened. She would not be raw with pain. She would be safely content. 

And now she was crying for Web, noisily and awkwardly gulping back her sobs for him. Dear, safe Web, whose arm could be comfortingly about her now, on whose shoulder her head could be nestling. Toward whose happiness all her energies could be devoted, as they had been for nine years. 

“I loved him, Andrea,” she said. “I did love him.”

“I do not doubt it for a moment,” her friend said from behind her, her voice distressed. “No one is arguing with you, Alice. And do you feel guilty now for loving his friend?”

“I always have,” Alice said quietly after drying her eyes and blowing her nose. She was still facing toward the window. “Since before I married Web. Since I was fourteen years old and he was handsome, devil-may-care, charming, one-and-twenty years old, and as far beyond me as the northern star. But I did love Web, too. He was the dearest man I have ever known. I would not have married him if I had been unable to love him.”

“Well,” Andrea said briskly, “a confession when I had given up trying to extract one. And the whole mystery of why Mr. Westhaven is not now marrying you instead of the girl in London—I do not even know her name. But I can understand your need to get away for a while. New scenery and new faces may be just what you. need. Don’t stay, though, Alice. You would not be happy living with someone else’s family. Now turn around. Let me see how red your eyes are. A good brisk walk around to the Crescent is what you need, my girl, and perhaps a march down to the shops. I dare you to buy the bonnet you have been resisting for the last three days.” 

Alice laughed shakily and turned around.

“Hm,” Andrea said. “Nothing that a little cold water will not disguise. Come to my dressing room with me. Perhaps we will meet a handsome stranger on Milsom Street. If so, I shall drop my reticule at his feet and effect an introduction. And you will be bowled off your feet and forget your Mr. Westhaven in the snap of a finger.”

Alice laughed. “He must be worth ten thousand a year at least,” she said.

“Done,” Andrea agreed. “It will be the first question I ask when he picks up my reticule.”

Two days later Alice left, completely alone, for Devonshire. She traveled post. There was a remote village close to the Sea, where she and Web had spent a day during their wedding journey. They had wandered hand in hand along the beach on a sunny, blustery day, laughing with the effort of keeping their hats from blowing away, marveling at the sunlight dancing on the waves. 

“If I ever had to leave Chandlos, Allie,” he had said, “if I were ever wanted by the law for some grand crime of passion, I think I would come here. I think I could live contentedly here for a lifetime. With you beside me, of course.” 

He had kissed her there on the deserted beach. She could still remember the newness of being able to allow such liberties, her relief at finding that she liked Web to touch her. She had always enjoyed intimacy with him, enjoyed the evidence of his pleasure.

She did not know why she remembered that particular place and those particular words. But she did. And she had decided almost immediately that she would go there.

There was a good posting inn close by, where she and Web had stayed. She would stay there for a day or two and inquire about the availability of cottages in the area.

She would stay there for a few months if she could while she made a more final decision about her future and her child’s.

At the inn where she spent the first night, she packed away the clothes she had worn that day at the bottom of a trunk of black garments. If within a few months she was to be noticeably a woman with child, then she must be recently widowed. 

She felt a pang of guilt toward a husband who had died and been bitterly mourned more than two years before. 

***

A long soak in a hot bath to rid himself of Sally’s perfume and the whole debauch of the night and morning, and two cups of strong black coffee made Piers feel at least human again, even if they did not rid him of his headache or the knowledge that he had reacted to pain and loss in a remarkably immature manner—as usual. Nothing much ever changed in his life, except the incidentals.

It would have felt good to follow Sally’s advice and sleep for the rest of the day. But sleeping would not cure him of a hangover, as he knew from experience. He dressed in his most fashionable London finery, put on his best expression of careless dandyism, and set forth in the direction of Russell Square.

By some miracle Cassandra was at home with her mother, though she was to drive out to St. James’s Park later—with Sir Clayton Lansing, of all people.

Piers was only thankful that the gentleman had not taken himself off back to Bath to bother Allie again.

“Ah, my dear,” he said after exchanging civilities with Lady Margam. “How lovely it is to see you again. And in better looks than ever.” He took Cassandra’s hand and raised it to his lips.

It was true, too. Someone had clearly advised her that a young lady about to become a young matron should rid herself of some of her ringlets. Her hair was shorter, less fussy, far more becoming.

“I have been busy,” she said, “and out every day and every evening. Have I not, Mama?”

“I do not doubt it,” he said, smiling down at her. “I shall have to keep a jealous eye on my betrothed, I can see, or she will be snatched from under my nose.”

“I do not like jealousy,” she said. “We will have to come to an agreement before our marriage on the amount of freedom each of us will be allowed.”

“Ah,” he said, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips. “But freedom to do what, pray?”

“To be admired by others,” she said. “To spend time with others. You are not planning to be Gothic, are you, sir?”

“My love,” her mother admonished quietly.

“I don’t believe it will be within my power,” he said. “I do not have any cobwebby attics or haunted garrets to lock you inside at Westhaven. You may rest easy, Cassandra.”

“Whatever are you talking about?” she asked, looking bewildered and not a little impatient. “Mama and I have drawn up a list of wedding guests. You must look it over to see if you wish to add any names. There are four hundred and twelve at the moment.”